Dangerously Sweet
by The Rainbow Alicorn
Summary: This is inspired by a thread (Torturing the Paidhi) on Shejidan, the Cherryh fan forum. It is fan fiction only, a fantasy of my own creation, and is not meant to reflect on anything CJ Cherryh has written or said. It is purely a parody. I do not own these characters. It's really just a series of little snippets of an idea I had. Please do not File Intent on me. XD
1. Chapter 1

In an effort to reduce the increasingly high intake of sugar among the ship and station folk, a very enterprising individual developed fruit candies made with a specially formulated artificial sweetener, designed to sweeten the much favored lollies, but not alter blood sugar or otherwise effect concentration or mental activity, particularly in children.

Their creator, Russel, was quite proud of his recipe, as it was bursting with fruit flavors, and still sweet despite having no sugar. Interested in marketing it to both humans and atevi (as any entrepreneur is interested in doing, of course), he sent a bag of samples to one Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, with a request to try them and determine whether or not atevi would consider them kabiu, and whether or not they would have a place in the sweets market.

The paidhi, so presented with such a request, of course took it to the four most important people in his life: his aishid. Being atevi, they would have the desired opinion, and being his body guards, they insisted on trying them first to determine their wholesomeness, with the promise that they would analyze the product and write down their reviews.

It sounded like a reasonable idea at the time.


	2. Chapter 2

_Several hours later..._

Algini swore colorfully under his breath, reached for more paper off the roll, and cursed his situation.

Those sugar free fruit candies had seemed like such an excellent idea. He and his partners had, of course, sampled one of each flavor (there were seven varieties), and everyone had agreed that the fruit flavors were intense, and almost as good as the real thing. They had reported favorably to their principal, and given him the paper they had recorded their observations on, for him to transmit with the daily upload to the station. And of course, to clear them for Bren-ji's consumption as well.

Too soon, he thought grimly, wincing silently. Much too soon.

He had felt fine until dinner time, when his stomach had started feeling unsettled, churning constantly. The first real indication that something was amiss were the sudden, painful cramps that gripped his guts during the soup course. He had carefully remained impassive, sat ramrod straight in his chair and pretended that absolutely nothing was wrong as they cleared the dishes away in preparation for the presentation of the meat course. They had changed seasons, and cook insisted on ceremony. It would not do at all to offend Bindanda by begging off in the middle of the meal to curl up in bed until his belly settled down. Or to claim that they could have all just been poisoned. This was Bindanda's kitchen. The only way you were likely to end up poisoned was if he was displeased with you.

Which made Algini wonder if this was payback for that joke he'd made last week...

The meat course hadn't improved his condition. The longer the meal stretched, as they lingered over companionable conversation and a palate cleanser, the more enraged his digestion became. His belly pained him to such a point that a sudden urgency for the accommodation seemed imminent and, desperate for a genteel escape that didn't involve a mad dash for the back of the apartment, he had had to fake a minor security concern in order to make a measured but hasty exit from the table before dessert could be served.

His fellow diners had looked rather nonplussed, especially considering his partners had received no such notification of any security problems.

So there he was, confined to the accommodation until his body started behaving, and glumly hoping the ventilation system was able to cope with the aftermath of the unspeakable horror he had just endured. He had already gone over what he had consumed that day three times, in his head, and could think only of the fruit candies as the only variation from normal. The rest of his team members had not showed a sign of reaction though, so he was starting to doubt if it really was the candies, and maybe Bindanda really was upset about tha-

Oh damn. He'd just used the last of the roll. The last of the last roll, apparently. The junior servants had not restocked this important commodity today. It was entirely possible, though, that they weren't expecting sudden, calamitous, nay, near apocalyptic bowel conditions. It was a good thing he'd already finished. If he moved quickly, he could have the paper restocked without anyone the wiser, and further disaster could be averted.


	3. Chapter 3

Dinner was over, the change of season had been heralded most magnificently, and the household had set about to disperse into it's usual after dinner activities. Bren Cameron would have desired an evening spent sitting in his comfortable chair in the study, relaxing in front of the fire with a glass of his favorite shibei, maybe even with a few of those fruit candies he had sampled earlier, but that was not to be the case.

Instead of feeling happily full and content with the excellent meal he'd just consumed, his belly was aching and churning, and it wasn't long before he felt the dire need for relief. So before the servants could attempt to settle him down for the evening, he managed to beat a dignified retreat to the closest household facilities. He nodded politely to Algini, who crossed paths with him on his way to the servants passages, perhaps investigating his security concern. He did look rather grim about something.

But he had greater things to worry about.

Such as, after a prolonged event that had left him gasping and wondering what on earth he'd eaten that could cause such incredible discomfort...

WHO USED UP ALL OF THE PAPER?!


	4. Chapter 4

Bindanda had finished supervising the clean up of the kitchen. All was cleaned and put away, the junior servants had just folded and restocked the tea towels (you could never have too many tea towels, in his opinion) and he'd locked up the larder for the night, in preparation for his own quiet evening in bed, with a good book. As he turned aside, he saw the servants gathered quietly in the doorway, watching him expectantly.

Ah, yes.

He had promised them a sampling of the fruit candies Bren-nandi had brought to them. They were reported to be very good, and their lord had wished an atevi opinion on how kabiu they were, as they were the special sugar free sort. Bindanda was highly suspicious of course, being the head chef that he was, but not so closed minded he wasn't willing to try at least one.

So he retrieved the large glass jar he had stored them in, and the servant staff each gathered a few and sampled the different flavors. There were many comments on how good they were; only a few negative reviews, but mostly from those who had accidentally picked a flavor they were normally not partial to. Bindanda picked a green one, pulled the brightly colored bit of cellophane off, and popped it into his mouth.

Mm, not bad. Perhaps a slight off taste, but it could have been the flavoring. This particular fruit did sometimes have that effect on certain people.

Everyone insisted on trying one of each flavor of course, felicitous seven candies each, which severely depleted the jar, but everyone was happy and gradually they wandered off to the last of their evening chores and finally, to bed. Bindanda tucked the jar away once more and was about to turn out the kitchen light when he paused, bottom lip caught in his teeth, thinking.

He hurried back across the kitchen to the jar and hastily scooped up a handful, looking about as guilty a naughty child, and stuffed the candies into his pocket as he left.

Sometimes sweets were just what he needed on busy, stressful or upsetting days, and he usually kept a little store of them in his dresser drawer. These would be perfect for his stash.


	5. Chapter 5

To say that the sugar free fruit candies were making themselves rather unpopular was a gross understatement. Rumors and reports started running through the halls of the third floor faster than the fiery hell that flowed through the bowels of the afflicted. It was soon clear that the paidhi's household was besieged by unspeakable misery, but despite all the intelligence gathering skills of the other households, no one could quite ascertain what the problem actually was, nor did anyone outright admit what they thought was causing it.

While Algini and Bren had been tending to their own personal difficulties, Banichi and Jago had left shortly after dinner to attend to routine matters at Guild headquarters. What should have taken only an hour or two turned into a several hour fiasco that Jago admitted was extremely uncomfortable and irregular, and which Banichi flatly refused to talk about. (The rumor is that he didn't even make it to headquarters, and instead spent a desperate, humiliatingly noisy evening in a public necessity at the train station terminal. He, of course, denies all of it. It is unclear whether or not they actually managed to attend to whatever matters it was they had to see to. Whenever that question was asked, they became evasive and refused to make eye contact.)

When the head of the aiji-dowager's security staff, Cenedi, called and made inquires with Tano as to the distress (everyone else being unavailable), he reluctantly described the symptoms of the problem, but said that they were double checking as to the cause. Unfortunately, Tano's own guts had chosen that moment to rebel. He was bracing himself against the counter in the security station during a particularly nasty cramp, trying to hear some ordinary piece of news Cenedi was telling him over the increasing volume of the animal sounds in his pelvic region, when he accidentally broke wind with the force of an earthquake. Mortified and embarrassed, he hurriedly signed off and slammed the phone down in its cradle, but not before he heard Cenedi's normally calm composure dissolve into a very undignified roar of laughter... adding insult to injury.

As he took his turn on the porcelain throne Tano, trying to suppress the shuddering of his insides, was sure that if someone, somewhere, had been listening in with bugs, they would have been blown off their chair, utterly deafened... and he was afraid what his team mates would say when they had to go into the guard post. The servants had closed the doors and refused to go in for anything.

Cenedi, in the corresponding office at the other end of the phone line, nearly ruptured himself in his mirth, causing several of his fellows to check in on him with some confusion as to what all the hilarity was about.


	6. Chapter 6

It took a few days for the paidhi's household to return to some semblance of normal. There were still scattered small incidents amongst the servant staff, and the first person who could leave the apartment safely to go shopping in the city for a resupply came back with an unseemly amount of toilet paper. Just in case.

Everyone, Bren included, was sharing the same tense, terse attitude about their everyday activities. Most were stressed, afraid to even leave the house in case they should be struck suddenly in a public place with no relief available and Bindanda, who seemed to have a terrible recurring case of this intestinal dysfunction, was absolutely beside himself. He had checked and rechecked all of the food stores, and was unable to determine the source or cause of the affliction. He and security decided to play it safe, and removed every ounce of edible food from the kitchen pantry to be destroyed and replaced with new stocks- thus the need for an urgent shopping trip.

The candy jar, large and ornate, remained in its place on the counter top near Bindanda's small, kitchen-side office, untouched. Although under suspicion, the candies themselves were somehow never completely blamed, and they remained in their jar, mostly forgotten about in the hullabaloo. It probably hadn't helped that some had used the candies as a way to relieve their distress and nerves, but they tasted so good, it was hard to believe or even consider that they could be the culprit.

It was only after several days of normality, in which there were no more incidents within the household, and no more desperate need to buy stock in loo roll, (and no more illicit snacking on sweeties), that Tano rediscovered the candies sitting on the bench top in the corner where they had been overlooked. The entire staff had been out of sorts for days now, and he had wakened for his early morning shift start peckish for the first time in a week. His foray into the kitchen to find toast and tea to hold him over until breakfast brought him past the crystal jar, sitting there so harmlessly, its contents reflecting like a rainbow through the cut facets of the jar.

He pondered that rainbow of sugar over his first few mouthfuls of toast and jam, while one of the young junior servants brewed a pot of strong tea. There was still a small possibility that the candies could have been the cause of the disastrous incident. Tano knew they should experiment and test that theory, but he knew that no one in their right mind was going to take another hit like that, even if it was for the team. He and his partners had not been prone to sickness or ill health in their employment, so the thought of being laid low by a handful of sweets was galling. Nor could he ask the servants, who had been so upset by it all. No, he could not possibly ask anyone in this house to take that chance.

However... there had been no reports of any such issue for any of the other households on this floor, and Tano's ego still smarted from Cenedi's outburst of laughter at his unfortunately timed release of flatulence. And Cenedi was not against sampling a few sweets himself when he thought no one was looking.

Yes. Oh, yes. He knew what had to be done.


End file.
